Ep. 9 - Hackers, Astronauts, and Murder (feat. Natalie McGrath)

Well, it's been a crazy week, Boneheads, so this episode is a little all over the place. Join me as I discuss my channel being hacked, the movie "Undertone", Tomie, and a special conversation with my mother about the movie "Project Hail Mary"!

This podcast is likely not suitable for younger audiences.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Howdy boneheads and welcome back to Habopo. My name is Connor McGrath, I'll be your skeleton host tonight, and I don't have a very intense structure for this episode. I have had uh a lot going on uh the past week or so, which uh we'll get to in a second, so I thought instead of trying to focus on just one horror movie or just one spooky topic, we could just have a chat and I could talk about some of the fun stuff that I've been dealing with and also uh like consuming as fiction recently. There will also be uh a special little clip from uh a conversation between my mother and I after we saw the movie Project Hail Mary, uh included later in this episode. So if you're interested in that, stay tuned. Uh but before that, let's talk about what happened to my channel. So on my main channel, not the one that you might be listening to this podcast episode on, uh I temporarily lost complete access to my not just my YouTube account, but like my whole Google account that was associated with the channel. Um for about three and a half days, I wanna say. Um oh, hi, that's my cat. You wanna say hello? What do you have to say to the people? You wanna say something? You wanna say something? Okay, I guess not. I guess not. She just wants to hang out with her papa in the graveyard. There she goes. Okay, anyway, so anyway, for about uh three and a half days, I was completely prevented from uh doing any kind of recovery on my account. They changed all my passwords, they established a new passkey, um, they took away all my recovery emails and phone numbers, and I was just SOL. I truly thought that the channel was gone forever. Um, and a really difficult part of the process is that both YouTube and Google don't seem to have their own actual customer support line or service. There's no one to email, no one to call. So I had to basically spam them on Twitter for their attention. And luckily, uh a little uh uh uh after multiple days of panicking and not being sure if I was gonna continue to have a YouTube career, I I got everything back, I got all the passwords changed, I got all the security meas uh measures put back up. But that was a very stressful experience. You all know me, you all know that I love horror, but that form of horror was uh a little bit too real to actually enjoy. Um there was a period uh when I was uh working on, I guess, setting up a second channel in the thoughts that I would not be able to regain access to my original one, uh, where I was considering writing um an essay. And I might still write this too, I don't know, uh, about the the horror of starting over, why it's so hard to start over and why we dread stuff dread those moments so much. Um I didn't get very far in the process. I had a very hard time uh getting anything done when I was trying to get my channel back because I was just too stressed and too panicky to actually put any real effort towards writing or brainstorming or anything like that. Luckily, that's not the case anymore, and I am well into production uh production on a video that I'm very excited about. But yeah, uh that was uh that was a whole thing. It was a whole thing, and uh I have to say thank you to basically everyone in my life. Uh uh my my friends, my family, my partner, and also a great deal of uh the members of of my community for um showing support and being willing to move to the next channel if that's what had to happen, and and being bummed out about what happened. Oh, and by the way, I didn't even mention this. Right before my channel got uh terminated, and I I figure this was the incident that made that happen. Um they briefly held a Bitcoin live stream on my channel, and I I don't really know who that was for. Like I I don't know if they were just like I j the logic behind it is totally lost on me because I don't know if they were trying to get it said there were two point four thousand viewers, which is I've never had that amount of people on my stream, so I don't know how that happened either. So I don't know if it was like a co-stream or like they were just linking a bunch of channels together trying to get as much. But like also why Bitcoin I I don't know. I truly this entire experience has been just so weird for me. But I'm very glad that it's over. And obviously it has not affected the podcast other than making it like a day late again, which I don't know. At some point I might consider returning to the uh every two-week schedule just so I can put a little bit more attention towards the main channel because I do have a a very long video um in the process right now, and that that deserves a good amount of time. But I do like doing this and it's not uh that much of a commitment, so uh I'm gonna try to stick with our schedule as much as I can um until it becomes too much or something else interrupted. But anyway. Alright, so uh as I mentioned earlier, I have a very fun, uh like I guess maybe like 10 to 15 minute um little conversation um prepared that I had with my mom yesterday after we got out of the film uh uh Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling. Um we both really liked the movie. We had a lot of fun with it. Um but full disclosure, uh this conversation was recorded on my phone on the voice memo app. I was trying to use uh better microphones, but unfortunately couldn't make it happen and was working on such a tight schedule that we just had to work with what we had. So this uh next portion of the podcast, which uh was recorded the day before this recording, um, is probably gonna have uh uh worse sound quality. Um, but I hope that you will forgive me for that and um enjoy this conversation with my mom. Uh I'll see you uh when it's over. So, uh you and I, uh do you want to introduce yourself very quickly?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I'm Natalie. I'm Mom.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yes. So I'm I'm sure that I gave a little preamble earlier in my podcast to this, but yes, this is my mother. Um, she was the one who recommended that I read Project Hail Mary, and we just got out of the film, out of the theater ourselves. And uh she's graciously held off on giving me her immediate thoughts on it until now as we drive home. So uh apologies for any uh difference in audio quality, which there certainly will be, but uh just wanted to have this little fun chat with her. Um so you read the book first. What what was what do you think the movie did the best from your imagination of it?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Oh wow. Well, first of all, um unlike many movies, movie adaptations, I think this movie was spot on. Yeah, I think it did so many things so well just from like the way that they did the flashbacks. Um they didn't do the flashback all at once, they did it in little bits the same way that Andy Weir did it in the book. Um, I thought that was amazing. Rocky was amazing. Um I think that um Grace was spot on, he was exactly who I saw him to be.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Um it is funny the translation between um the narration of the book, which is completely Grace's perspective, to the uh you know the third person perspective that the movie shows us with um Ryan Gosling as Grace. Um he definitely has very a couple more Ryan Gosling isms. That little shrieky yell he does, that felt very specific to Ryan. I was not imagining that for Grace.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Um but that's just that that's part of the charm that draws people, non-andy weir, non-science fiction people, to any Ryan Gosling movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

So and our theater was packed today. There was like there were younger kids in there, there were there were adults, there was um yeah, for a 9 30 on a Sunday movie, yeah, Sunday morning movie, that was it was pretty good. Yeah. Um I uh I think this score, which I think I saw Chris Pemberton or some some name along those lines. Uh I thought the score was so so good. It it there's something about cosmic interstellar movies, like obviously Interstellar is a is one of them, but like The Martian also did this, but just you know, 2001 is space, odyssey, another favorite of mine. There's something about space as a setting and and having an orchestral theme as a backdrop for that that just makes my heart pound.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

You're you are so acutely aware of music in movies, and I'm sure that if it wasn't there, I would I would notice it. I I'm sure it enhances movies in a way that most people don't recognize. I'm not one of those people who recognizes it. Sure. When you point it out, I recognize it, and I'm like, oh yeah, that really is great music, but I don't think I notice it as much as you do.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Well, like, I I think one standout, and I and I I can appreciate that, and I understand that there are different things that different people um have more of an attraction to when they're they're taking in fiction in that way. But there was one standout moment where the score uh I remember you said it. Oh, do you?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

I don't remember when it was, but I remember you like, oh, this music is great.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah. Um but there is this moment, and it's kind of like the climax of the action of the film. Yes. Where after they've used this whole chain, like there's a bunch of science stuff. We're not doing a plot synopsis here, but they use this chain fishing line thing to try to get some uh samples from the atmosphere of a planet, and it's very intense, and there's a huge risk to both of their lives. Um, and there's this one moment where there's like a the a rising uh tone in the music, like it's getting more and more intense, and then it kind of has this like little drop-off, like this pause, this lull. And there's this moment, and it's very like anyone who's seen a movie is like, okay, I know it's about to happen here, but they're like, Did we do it? I think we did it! And then there's this quick, like, two-second reveal of two different pieces of equipment falling to the ground, insinuating gravity is still active, which is a bad sign, and then when gravity's full force comes down on them and he smashes up against that, the music comes back all at once and crescendos into the climax of its theme, and that is very powerful. And I I really enjoyed that. Um, in in space, uh uh modern space fiction, there are actually two weird different like forms of music that people have kind of defaulted to recently, and one of them is very much like the orchestral theme, like the grandeur and majesty of space. But we've also started seeing like uh bluegrass and country movement in space, trying to like ground space. It's like um, you know, part of what makes Alien so fun as a series is like the grittiness of some of it, like it's futuristic, like Weyland Utani, when you're looking at like them as a corporation, they are incredibly rich and high sci-fi tech, but it's also like a lot of space is about people doing work and being kind of blue-collar just up there. And so, um the two, you know, obviously, when like I mentioned earlier, when you have these orchestral themes, it's about kind of like the early human perception of space, in that it is like the first frontier, this place of wonder, and and I really wonder was actually a word that I I felt was a standout for this movie. Um, but the other thing is like in other perceptions, maybe bleaker perceptions, or maybe different interpretations, it's like, no, this is just another space where work will have to be done, and so then you get to see like a little bit more of an acoustic vibe coming. So it was really interesting. I just always think about that.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Um well they I mean they highlighted sign of the times. Um, and of course, that just is playing over and over in my head right now as a music, as a the musical interlude for that movie.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Of course. Of course. I I'm not a big Harry Styles guy, but that song is done that I that song is appearing everywhere. How did you feel about Stra and and the her the performance of the actress who portrayed her? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

You really liked it?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Oh, I really did. There was a difference to me, but she's not who I pictured.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Um I pictured someone slightly younger.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Maybe I did too, but she was um Eastern European in just the right way, she was hardcore in just the right way. Like, um, she when she sang the song, right, she gave it a human element, and yet she had to be hard, right? She had to be um apathetic to what he wanted, and um man, that scene too. I mean, obviously, this is this podcast is gonna be full of spoilers, right? So that scene where he jumps up on the cabinet and then he takes off running. Yeah um and she's like, Yeah, I'm not here to hear your um your reasons why you can't go and be sympathetic to you. I'm here to give you um I'm here to give you the bad news and tell you that, yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

She she's a really philosophically interesting character, and I do think that she is a character that you really benefit from reading the book first, because the book uh the movie wants to obviously spend as much time on uh Grace and Rocky as it can, because that's kind of the meat. Um, but the book has more time to spend on um Strahd's character, and it really does put so much greater of a focus on the fact that for the time being, she can do whatever she wants. She has unlimited authority. Oh gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

And and that it's your life.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, she she there's so many times like she gets put on like a something like a military tribunal, or just she's on trial for something, and she basically says, I don't have to be here, I'm here as a courtesy. This entire courtroom does not matter to me. And but there is a conversation I was thinking of, and I honestly thought it might come up, but it didn't. Where uh Grace says, Once this is all over, what's gonna happen to you? And she says, I suspect like I'll go to prison that I'll become the scapegoat of the world.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Because she's doing epic and dubious. I I actually think they maybe alluded to it, like right when we saw the explosion, and Grace goes, So what's your plan for the next 20 years or something long as a I was like, maybe, but no, I I would have loved for that conversation to be included. But I think they did they did actually include something that was not in the book, which was showing Earth at once it received um Grace's uh the Beatles. Um which I think is an interesting choice. I I think part of what I liked of the book was.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You have to show the compression of time, sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah, the sea was completely all frozen.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Um we're gonna take a brief pause here, but this also might be the end of our conversation, depending on how things go. Um, but yeah, we'll um uh let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Um I I really do think it was so important that they showed that um return to earth, they didn't include that in the book, and it was an important part of it that time had passed, and and obviously the earth had cooled in that time, and um it was um really interesting that you get to see that if those beetles had not returned to earth the earth was already suffering. Yeah, it was it was a real representation of what really could have happened and what was happening. She looked, she had aged, yeah. I think they represented that as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Well, it's interesting because in the book we get the inverse of that where Grace is aged, and we only get told vaguely down the line that Earth's sun has indeed um regained its irregular luminance, which implies that something happened on Earth, but we don't know, you know, exactly how that was accomplished, and we don't know the fate of everyone. Meanwhile, in this we we we see Grace in his youth and then Earth and its or rather the the people we left on Earth in in their older age, which is an interesting flip. And I do think they wanted to humanize Straut a little bit more because I think there's there's an argument to be made that Straut is a is, like, is a villain, not the villain to Earth, but like she's in the book at least, I think she's partially the villain.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Certainly. But also you know that she's doing what has to be done.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It has to be done.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

She maybe villain's wrong, maybe antagon- Well, antagonist is not right. It's just that one scene.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

It's but truly, you get you get that she's the villain, but we have to have that villain. How do you she's she's the necessary villain, or we don't survive as humanity.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

It is true. It is true, and that's that is I think that's why she's such a fascinating character. Yeah, yeah. That's a great way to put it in a difficult villain. Which leads me into like my one of the questions that I thought was so intriguing is like Gra how do you feel about Grace being a coward? And we get us getting that revelation so late into the game in both the movie and the uh book.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Right. I I do love that it comes it's it's just so well written. The book was well written, and and I love that the book that the movie follows the book so well. Yeah there's so it's so cool that so much is revealed right at the end. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And it recontextualizes everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

It does, and yet you already know that he is um the hero, even as it's being revealed that he was the coward.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Mm-hmm. Right?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

It's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

It's um, you know what I was thinking, uh, the hero's journey, which is like a classic like narrative structure. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It was um it was uh put put out by uh an author a long time ago. I can't remember his name, I apologize. But um, one of the classic, like, first steps in any heroic story is refusal of the call. And what's so interesting is that's usually like very early on into the story, but because we're having this flashback, flash forward sequence, we are getting his hero's journey out of order. Yes. And um what's so interesting is I actually don't think they included this in the movie, but they did in the book, is that the amnesia was actually the fault of Strahd. It was the company that did it. Right. I don't I think they might have implied it was accidental in the movie, that he was just kind of recovering everything. But in the in the book, the reason he has amnesia is because they don't want him to freak out and like destroy the ship when he first wakes up.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

So it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

It is.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

He he is forced to be a hero. Uh he has greatness thrust upon him, which is the And he will be remembered as a hero.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah, he's martyr.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Alright.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah, that's probably a good time. Thank you for joining me for this brief little period, mom. I didn't uh had a great time at the movie and I had a great time talking with you about it. Awesome. So that was that. Uh I I just recorded this little section moments after finishing my other one, so I did not go back and re-listen to our conversation, but I don't really need to. I had it yesterday. Um I want to thank um my mom again for agreeing to be on my podcast. I know that it's like it's not necessarily uh a uh something that she has much experience with, but it was um it was very fun to chat. Um at some point I might try to get her uh more officially onto an episode, but for the time being, um I I enjoy having other people on the show, and I'm gonna try to make that happen more often. There still will be episodes, that's mostly just me talking in the graveyard, but I have got I've got people that I can bring on, and if all else fails, maybe I'll start bringing on members or something. I don't know. Uh uh if you you show a great deal of support for the podcast, maybe you can appear on the podcast. What a deal. Um anyway, I wanted to move on to another topic, another uh uh piece of fiction that I recently consumed. And also, uh uh I would do a uh greater episode on this because I actually saw this movie with my brother, um, who you may have seen on my other channel before. We uh he and I have streamed together a couple times, and also sometimes he shows up in just the the live chat for my streams. Um but he and I uh on the day of the day before my birthday, I think not that that matters, uh, we went and saw the movie Undertone. And uh it's kind of fun talking about uh a podcast movie on a podcast. It's like it's like maybe Undertone is maybe this is Undertone. Welcome back to the Undertone podcast. No, uh Undertone was the friends we made along the way, that's what I was trying to get at, but it it doesn't really make that much sense. So my relationship with the undertone movie, uh I've been comparing it um to how I felt about Long Legs, which was and uh I've I've stressed this in a video as well, but um to recap, Long Legs was a movie that I think had really great presentation, like the way it was filmed, the way it visually looked was really strong. I think the performances in themselves uh were good. Um but however powerful the first like 80% of the movie is, um the ending fell really flat for me. And because it was a mystery uh crime drama thriller kind of thing, um it retroactively maybe weakened the earlier part of the experience for me because I was like, okay, well this was all cool, but what were we leading up to? And that's that's basically the exact same experience I had with Undertone. Um so brief synopsis. Undertone is a movie that basically stars j uh uh basically only has two characters. There is a mother character, but she's no that's not true. Okay, so anyway, um Undertone is a movie about a podcast host. Um she hosts a late night horror podcast with her friend who appears to live overseas. Um she's currently taking care of her mother, who appears to be very sick, probably about to die, so she's she's just doing you know end-of-life stuff for her mother. Um and they are sent a bunch of uh uh voice recordings or just audio files uh between a couple who are uh uh the the the husband or the boyfriend or whoever um is uh Been hearing his uh partner speaking in her sleep, talking in her sleep, uh, and he's recording it for proof. And as they go through all ten of these audio files, it gets weirder and more mysterious, and they start hearing strange voices and like doing research and codes and clues. And a lot of it's very fun. And I I'll say the sound design for the movie, I uh especially having seen this in theaters, I think also uh doing it with headphones would be um a good experience. Um the sound design is very strong. There are these moments when you know the uh very intentionally they draw attention to the ticking of the clock and just the ambient noise in this woman's kitchen as she's getting set up, and then she puts on her headphones and you get like that active noise cancellation effect within the film. Um and it's good. Like it it does draw you in. And I they I think the voice actors do a pretty good job. But here's where I start to fall off. Part one, the writing is weird, they're just kind of jumping to random conclusions. They're they're like, oh, we're talking about nursery rhymes, and then all of a sudden the like so uh they they break up the the two characters, there's the skeptic and there's the believer, which is like a classic uh kind of arrangement. I I can see why that would be the setup for the podcast. But the the the believer just believes in anything, just hears like vague nursery rhyme stuff and is like, oh, what if this is about the black plague? What if this kind of like you you you know that whole idea that a lot of children's nursery rhymes, like London Bridge is Falling Down or Ring Around the Rosie, are actually about very dark topics. That that like plays a role in it, and it's just it it's a little clunky. I I don't like you're not gonna be lost, but you're also gonna be like, okay. Um, but really what what was most disappointing to me, and I'm curious to see how other um listeners feel about this who have seen the movie, was that when it ended, we got a closure on truly nothing. And I I've said this before and I stand by it. I like being given room to imagine and and theorize in in movies. I I appreciate um not being told all the answers. But I do need to be told enough to make that imagination uh to make that process more enjoyable. Because truly, when I say that nothing, uh we got closure on nothing, I mean nothing. We don't know what happened to the main character, we don't know the answer to the mystery, we don't know what happened to the people. I I guess we kind of we as we they died, I believe. And I guess that implies that we died. But like the mother stands up and the the the daughter gets pregnant and there's th there's a demon apparently that's coming to get her. And and like that's all implied and shown to us, and then there is a blackout audio jump scare, not even a jump scare, just like a weird audio closer where we hear a bunch of stuff happening, but we're not really sure what it is, and we get zero information. I um true, like look, there is room to theorize. You could be like, and also I don't even think it's that much of a theory. There was a demon in the audio, demon came out, I guess probably possessed the mom, and then I believe pushed the main character down the stairs. But that's not satisfying because we don't know really who the demon is. It's the way I'm presenting it is maybe not uh the best way to present it because the but truly we're working with such incomplete information already that by trying to describe the ending and trying to summarize this film, I I'm kind of actually hitting the same beats and and accomplishing the same thing that the movie did, which is this is a lot of stuff that may maybe sounds kind of cool on paper. And obviously, as someone who engages with like a lot of audio horror, I I am I I fully believe that it can be done well. But I think that maybe this film got too hung up on trying to do the audio horror thing and accomplishing like the that pretty well, that it really neglected completing its thought as a story, like actually having a point and a resolution. Because when the movie ended, I just remember being like, oh, okay, okay, so so what? So what? Literally, like so who cares about all of that. Um I I don't think this was a bad movie per se, but I do think that it's not a movie that I'm gonna watch again because it's just unsatisfying. There's there there you just you don't you get tension out of it, but for someone like me who who consumes horror every day, usually for multiple hours a day, tension's an ingredient, it's not the whole meal. You know, in the same way that when people talk about jump scares, I actually had a comment on one of my streams recently, which is like, what was what is your scariest horror game? And then they clarified game that you jumped the most at. And I was like, well, definitively it's not that. My my favorite horror game, I think the most effective horror game, has nothing to do with how many jump scares are in it. It's an ingredient in the meal. It's not you it can't be the primary focus. It would be like jump scares are salt, right? You can't have a meal that's just salt. I I mean I guess you could, but it wouldn't be a good meal. Um you the jump scares, yeah, jump scares are salt. The meat is the acting, or the meat is the story. The bread is the I don't know, I guess this is a sandwich now. Horror is a sandwich, and the meat is the story, and the bread is the acting, and the ham or no, that's meat. Um the mustard is the the the framing and the pickles are the sound design and salt is the jum scares. I don't know. This is not a great metaphor. But the the point is, um, asking me a question of what's the scariest horror game you've ever played because of jump scares, um, will be, I don't know. I I guess like Spooky's jump scare mansion. It has the most jump scares in it, and I like it the most out of specific jump scare horror. But like, I don't know. My I I I for a long time I've said my favorite horror game is Resident Evil 7. That's probably still true. It might also be Outlast, it might even be Resident Evil 9, because as I mentioned in my uh in in very uh very wordily, over the course of like an hour and 45 minutes, um, Resident Evil 9 was great. So um, but yeah, those games have the occasional jump scare, like once or twice, but really it is the combination of atmosphere and world building and character design and dialogue and just all of that. So um that's where I I think a lot of uh mainstream horror kind of falls apart recently, is they get too hung up on trying to do one thing really well. Like, you know, they'll do a zombie movie and they'll spend all their time on making the zombies like it practically, or CG, I don't know, uh making the zombies look as cool as possible, but then they won't do anything to like make the zombie movie itself unique. Or they'll uh they'll make a movie about a a slasher who who who kills people in one very specific way, and they just focus on the specific way that he kills people, but they don't work focus on his motivation or like making compelling characters to give more weight to his killings. That uh for instance, like that's that's very much kind of what happens later in like the Saw franchise, or just basically any franchise that has to do with killing that goes on for long enough. It starts being about the killer, not the victims. And uh I I I've said this before, I'm I'm a fan of slashers, and in in some ways I actually enjoy that, but but you you you kind of have to stumble your way into that. Like I I I remember there was a uh uh last year, maybe the year before, I watched like five Friday to the uh Friday the 13th movies back to back, and those movies are fun, and the first one's iconic, and the I guess the third one is when he gets his hockey mask, also vaguely iconic. But after a while you're just watching those movies, like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And then he runs away, and then the people are having sex and they get killed, and then and then m Michael's or not Michael, Jason smashes his arm through a a window or a wooden panel or something and grabs someone, and it's just kind of all the same thing. And you're like, okay, the the fun through line is Jason, but you don't get that um experience when you're watching one movie that's trying to do one thing. So this is a long-form way of saying, uh, I wanted more from Undertone, I really did. Um and I'm bummed I didn't get it. I don't know. Uh now to speak on something that I do like a little bit more, but it's something I've already consumed, so it's not a first-time experience for me. Um I've talked many times about how my favorite artist uh I would consider to be uh Junji Ito, the uh horror manga uh creator. Uh and I'm currently uh rereading Tomie, um, which is uh one of his most famous stories of all time. And also I I imagine one of his earliest works, because as I'm rereading it, I'm um I'm recalling and and and seeing that um his his drawing style is a little bit different in the in in the early panels of Tomie. It's like a little it's uh sloppy's the wrong word, but it's like he has a very sharp, precise style that I I've grown accustomed to. Um like if you've ever you know read Uzumaki, which is possibly his other most famous work. Um I'm gonna sneeze, give me one second. But but there's just uh a little bit more of like sketchy, I I'm not I'm not sure the right descriptor because I am not an artist myself, but um his his line work is is not as precise. It it feels just like it probably an earlier stage in his work. Um but as I'm rereading Tomier right now, and I'm not too deep into it, I'm remembering it so much darker than I than I had in my head. In my head, I was like, okay, Tomier is the story about the very beautiful, uh I think high school age to maybe adult, I I can't remember how if she ages during the story. Um very beautiful, people fall in love with her, but then kind of go crazy and kill her. But I I forgot, A, just how much of a role she plays in that. She really is an antagonist a lot of the time. She she is she is going out of her way to make people uncomfortable and to steal boyfriends and to get into unhealthy relationships. But the other thing I forgot was how dark her like origin story is, too. Like, she was in a uh a relationship with her teacher, which is obviously bad, and wanted to get married, and there there was this whole thing where she was like putting a lot of pressure on the teacher, and then someone overheard her, pushed her off a cliff during a school trip, and everyone thought that she was dead, and decided, hey, we all like our teacher. It's fine that he was in a relationship with a minor. Let's cut Tomie up and hide her body. And then, as they are about to start doing that, um, she wakes up and reveals that, oh no, she she's alive, but they're like, ah, in for a penny, in for a pound, and kill her anyway. Um And then she comes back and it and it gets it spirals into a m like her truly being a villainous character. But it is like, man, the very first thing that happened to Tomie that makes all of this so uh disturbing is uh she she was in an inappropriate relationship already. She was attacked, and then her entire classroom um defended her teacher over bringing justice to her. And in fact, she could have lived, but because again, in for a penny, uh they they they killed her anyway because uh obviously the alternative would have gotten a lot of people in a lot of trouble. Um it's a really good story. It's it's very weird, and and you have to acknowledge that it this is intentional, but like Tomie, who again in the early stages at least is a high schooler, is uh an underage girl, being destroyed described as a seductress, like and and and she is, like, she is going out of her way to seduce people. Like I said, she steals boyfriends, but I don't know. I I think that there's it's very interesting looking at like the overt sexuality that is attached to this high schooler because it it's not like Tomie herself is sexualized by the narrative. Jinji Ito is not making a Gooner story. That that's not what Tomie is, it is a horror story, and the the the darkest parts of the narrative feed into that horror rather than detracting from it for some kind of scumbag reason. Um but it's it is very interesting to analyze and look at how uh women interact with Tomie in the book, how they admire her, but also kind of hate her. Um, and I don't know, there there's probably uh someone who's a little bit more informed on like feminist theory and and and gender politics who who could more accurately describe like the the interesting themes and dynamics that are presented in the story. But obviously also the the the dynamic that exists between Tomie and most male characters um is is is really interesting because Tomie is like almost like an infection, she's a curse. Like sometimes when she dies, she doesn't reform, she kind of just takes over someone else, and her personality becomes their personality, and she is so self-obsessed, she she clearly values her own beauty above everything else, and that's what everyone mentions about her first. Um But the other part is like it in in quite the Junji Ito fashion, like peop people behave in a kind of stilted way, like they are they are characters who are like, Yeah, did you did you hear that that this girl appeared at her high school and there are tons of witnesses, but we're not gonna follow up on that, and we're just gonna be like, it's a rumor. Um I'm not sure the era that um Tomia is meant to depict. I don't know if it's meant to be modern or maybe like a throwback to like uh like pre-internet times when maybe the spread of information was a little bit more restricted and and uh urban legend was a little bit um more powerful. And obviously, even in the early stages of the internet, um that was true. And uh uh actually this this this makes me think of something else, which is that in our current internet age where misinformation is so much more prevalent now, especially with the um with the growth of AI as a a regularly appearing tool or scourge on the internet, however you want to look at it, um, we are entering a new age where urban legend, I think, is going to um kind of amp up again. Like you're already hearing stories of like my AI girlfriend said something really terrifying to me, or I just saw a bunch of photos online and I don't know if they're real, and like it's gonna be the new ghost story. Uh uh like early 2000s, like host era horror where the internet was new and everyone was like, oh, I don't really know what's on there, and anything could be on there, and it could be scary people or a ghost could be in there, or or cursed information. Weirdly, like, we're coming to this new internet era where there is now again so many unknowns, and obviously there are people who are so much more well-versed in it that in many circumstances I imagined the oh, this is confusing and scary could easily be explained by someone who gets it. But I do think we're entering an age where there are going to be so many more mysteries and and strange encounters. Like something I saw recently, this was really weird. TikTok um was giving people really, really weird suggestions on their like search bar. And I I don't use TikTok. I I saw this on my girlfriends. Some of them were like, they're eerie if you don't know what it's from, but it was literally quoting W. D. Gaster from Undertale. But a bunch of stuff, it was like, don't listen to their voices, they're coming. Scratch at your skin and peel away the flesh. And I was like, what is this? And it had like there has to be an explanation. It's something algorithmic. They were trying a new, probably AI feature, and it it fucked up in a weird way. Or but there's so many things of like asking Grok, like, oh, if you could be a human, what would you do? And it'll be like, I want to kill other humans. I don't know if that's grok, but you you've heard these kinds of stories. Um and I personally I find it fascinating. Despite my distaste for AI in most cases, um, I think there is this uh there is an intriguing element to what's happening online right now. It's it's actually it's a truthfully very like reality-based, it's a very scary thing in the real world, the the idea that we're having less and less control over the flow of information, that it's so much easier to pull the wool over someone's eyes or convince someone that something is true that isn't, or vice versa. But uh from a like an aesthetic, like historical large scale perspective, I do think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening right now. I don't know if necessarily I want to be a part of it, but I'm definitely down to hear about it. So that's gonna do it for us today. I know this was a much shorter episode. Like I said, I have been very busy recently and I didn't have time to plan for a huge structured episode. But again, thank you to my mom for joining for that little clip. Um thank you for listening. Thank you if you were if you gave me any level of support when I was dealing with the hacking. That was, again, a very stressful situation, and I really appreciate the people who had my back for that. Um so uh currently I am planning on having another episode uh Saturday or Sunday within about a week of this uh podcast's release. Um but if there's any changes, I will update you uh on this podcast channel and the main channel where most of my uh works can be seen. Uh speaking of which, now that it's back, if you are not already a fan of the channel, which again I don't imagine you made it to this podcast without already being a fan of mine, but if you have, um go ahead and check out the channel. There's a lot of good stuff on there. I stream occasionally. Um I've got lots of video essays that thankfully are still up. And uh I will see you guys in the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode. I just said that. Okay. Bye everybody, bye boneheads. Bye-bye, I'm gonna go.